Israeli Car Attack: NSG Not Allowed To Gather Data From Spot

[Purveyor]

Published: Wednesday, Feb 15, 2012, 17:13 IST
Place: Gurgaon | Agency: PTI

In a surprise departure from norms, investigators of the NSG post-blast study team were not allowed to gather vital data of the terror-struck and burnt Israeli embassy SUV citing "diplomatic reasons".

NSG's National Bomb Data Centre (NBDC) is the central nodal agency for monitoring, recording and analysing all bombing incidents in the country and it acts as the vital repository of all domain knowledge in this regard.

"Let me clarify, we were not involved in the analysis of this particular incident (sticking of magnetic bomb in an Israeli embassy vehicle). Having said that, I can only make a educated guess like you that it is an explosive device," NSG DG RK Medhekar told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here when asked about the analysis of his blast study team in the February 13 terror incident.

The National Security Guard chief, however, did not elaborate on the reasons but senior officials of the elite force said they were asked not to visit the spot near the Prime Minister's residence due to some "diplomatic reasons".

MORE...

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_israeli-suv-attack-nsg-not-allowed-to-gather-data-from-spot_1650512

[xchrom]

1. that's curious. nt

[JDPriestly]

5. Not really. The embassy enjoys diplomatic immunity and is independent of

local government. The local government has a duty to protect from the outside, but no rights inside the compound, I should think.

Remember, in times of political upheaval, political dissidents who fear arrest seek refuge in embassies friendly to their cause. And why? Because the local police must respect the embassy's independence. It is a violation of the sovereignty of the nation owning the embassy for the local police to just barge in or demand access to evidence or fugitives in the embassy. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding.

[Scootaloo]

2. That seems odd

If it were in fact a case of the Delhi police and forensic teams having a handle on it, why cite diplomatic relations?

[KansDem]

3. There's precedent: Bush wouldn't let the FBI question OBL's relatives living in the US...

...following 9/11.

I've often wondered if we could have gotten OBL much sooner with the information gleaned from interviewing his relatives...

[surfdog]

4. Link?

[KansDem]

7. Here are a few...

In the days after 9/11, two dozen members of the Bin Laden family and over 100 members of the Saudi royal family were flown to assembly points in Texas and Washington and then flown out of the country. At least one of these flights took place during the total ban on civilian air traffic over North American airspace. Declassified FBI documents show that the Bureau believed the Bin Laden family flight out of the country—carrying suspected terrorists Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden—was chartered by Osama Bin Laden himself, but some of the passengers, including Abdullah, were not even interviewed in person by the FBI before their departure.

http://www.corbettreport.com/the-last-word-on-osama-bin-laden/

Why were the FBI called off its investigation of Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Royal Family prior to 9/11? Moreover, why were the FBI Agents ordered to curtail their investigation of these attacks on October 10, 2001? The FBI has repeatedly complained that it has been muzzled and restricted in its attempts to investigate matters connected to Bin Laden and Al Qeada. One law enforcement official was quoted as saying, "The investigative staff has to be made to understand that we’re not trying to solve a crime now." FBI Agents are said to be in the process of filing a law suit agents the Agency for the right to go public.

Why was Bin Laden not captured before 9/11, and why has he not been captured since? There have been several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden, but no effort to do so was made. Two US allies, Saudi Arabia, and The United Arab Emirates, have colluded in deliberately allowing Bin Laden to stay free. Bin Laden was meeting with the CIA as late as July 2001. An examination of U.S. attempts to capture Osama bin Laden show they have in fact consistently blocked attempts to investigate and capture him. Eleven bin Laden family members were flown safely out of the same Boston airport where the highjacking took place a few days earlier. Why were they not detained for questioning?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm

Why in the HELL are the news whores bandying out the fact that Dick Clarke approved the post 9/11 Saudi Flights after the CIA and FBI cleared the family members instead of DEMANDING to know WHO MADE THE REQUEST, MADE THE CALL TO BEGIN WITH REQUESTING THAT THEY BE GIVEN CLEARANCE TO FLY TO BEGIN WITH?

Every news show is using this item as a way to entirely discredit "Fahrenheit 9/11" as playing loose with the facts since it doesn't mention Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke is a footnote in the story, not the headline!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1860471

TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.

The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

The odyssey of the small LearJet 35 is part of a larger controversy over the hasty exodus from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11 of members of the Saudi royal family and relatives of Osama bin Laden.

The terrorism panel, better known as the 9/11 Commission, said in April that it knew of six chartered flights with 142 people aboard, mostly Saudis, that left the United States between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001. But it has said nothing about the Tampa flight.

The commission's general counsel, Daniel Marcus, asked TIA in a letter dated May 25 for any information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001." He asked for the information no later than June 8.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/saudisflown913fbi

Why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days
after September 11 and pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly them
out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?

Private jets, under the supervision of the Saudi government - and with your
approval - were allowed to fly around the skies of America, when traveling
by air was forbidden, and pick up 24 members of the Bin Laden family and
take them first to a "secret assembly point in Texas". They then flew to
Washington DC, and then on to Boston. Finally, on September 18, they were
all flown to Paris, out of the reach of any US officials. They never went
through any serious interrogation. This is mind-boggling. Might it have been
possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have possibly known
something?

While thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were
a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in US history, you got a free
trip to gay Paree!

Why, Mr Bush, was this allowed to happen?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/mooreonbush100703.cfm

AFTER 9/11 - WHITE HOUSE FLIES BIN LADENS OUT OF AMERICA: In the immediate wake of 9/11, all flights in the United States were grounded. But as the new book "House of Bush, House of Saud" notes in its first excerpts on Salon.com, the flight ban had one exception: the Saudi relatives of Osama bin Laden. As Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged, members of bin Laden's family were put on flights that "were coordinated within the U.S. government" and allowed to go back to Saudi Arabia. According to the excerpt and to Gerald Posner's "Why America Slept," the White House-authorized flights out of the United States also included Saudi Prince Ahmed, who a top Al Qaeda terrorist said "knew beforehand that an attack was scheduled for American soil" on 9/11. The White House's decision to allow the Saudis to leave came at the same time Vanity Fair notes "Arabs were being rounded up and interrogated" all over the country and Attorney General John Ashcroft was asserting that the government had "a responsibility to use every legal means at our disposal to prevent further terrorist activity by taking people into custody who have violated the law and who may pose a threat to America." Law enforcement officers were asking why these family members - some of whom had direct ties to Osama bin Laden - were allowed to leave and wondered "how could officials bypass such an elemental and routine part of an investigation during an unprecedented national-security catastrophe? At the very least, wouldn't relatives have been able to provide some information about Osama's finances, associates, or supporters?"

AFTER 9/11 - WHITE HOUSE ASSAILED FOR GIVING PASS TO SAUDIS: In the year following the 9/11 attacks, Fox News reported lawmakers investigating the Sept. 11 attacks believe the Administration "has not aggressively pursued the possibility that the Saudi government provided money to students who helped two of the hijackers." Congressional committees also "accused the Saudi government of not fully cooperating with American investigators" but faced a strong defense from the White House. Bush Communications Director Dan Bartlett "disputed congressional critics" saying "As anyone who knows this issue will tell you, it's very difficult to track financing of terrorist networks because most of it is done in cash."

AFTER 9/11 - CLASSIFYING INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: In 2003, more and more evidence began to appear tying the Saudi royal family to the attacks. For instance, Newsweek reported that thousands of dollars in charitable gifts from Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, "ended up in the hands of two of the September 11 hijackers." Yet, as congressional committees prepared to release a bipartisan report on the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration swiftly moved to classify a section of the report which dealt with the Saudi ties to the attack. According to CBS News, that section "examined interactions between Saudi businessmen and the royal family that may have intentionally or unwittingly aided al Qaeda or the suicide hijackers." Not surprisingly, months after 9/11 Vice President Cheney went on Fox News to announce the Administration's full opposition to an independent 9/11 commission.

AFTER 9/11 - STILL PRAISING THE SAUDIS WHILE THEY REFUSE TO COOPERATE: President Bush has simultaneously repeated a mantra that "if you aid a terrorist, if you hide terrorists, you're just as guilty as the terrorists" while also going "out of his way to compliment the Saudis." While the President says the Saudis are an "important friend" to the United States, the royal family "refuses to permit United States investigators to interrogate one of bin Laden's key financial aides-Sidi Tayyib" a man who "probably knows as much as anyone else about bin Laden's intricate financial empire." Meanwhile, officials at the Treasury and Justice departments have privately expressed deep frustration over the failure of the Saudi government to impose stricter controls over their Islamic charities and turn over crucial evidence about the murky flow of money to Al Qaeda.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/06/b99415.html

Michael Moore also addresses this in "Fahrenheit 9/11"--

(Go to 9'20&quot

(From 0'00" and especially 11'39&quot

[surfdog]

9. I'm still confused

Where in the link does it say Bush ordered this ?
from what I understand Richard Clarke was as high as it went and he released the flights

I'm pretty sure he testified to that

I would read another link if you got it but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering the story correctly

[KansDem]

10. Here's a couple more...

PALAST:
I showed lawyer Michael Wildes our FBI documents. One of the Khobar Towers bombers was represented by Wildes, who thought he had useful intelligence for the US. He also represents a Saudi diplomat who defected to the USA with 14,000 documents which Wildes claims implicates Saudi citizens in financing terrorism and more. Wildes met with FBI men who told him they were not permitted to read all the documents. Nevertheless, he tried to give them to the agents.

WILDES:
"Take these with you. We're not going to charge for the copies. Keep them. Do something with them. Get some bad guys with them." They refused.

PALAST:
In the hall of mirrors that is the US intelligence community, Wildes, a former US federal attorney, said the FBI field agents wanted the documents, but they were told to "see no evil."

WILDES:
You see a difference between the rank-and-file counter-intelligence agents, who are regarded by some as the motor pool of the FBI, who drive following diplomats, and the people who are getting the shots called at the highest level of our government, who have a different agenda - it's unconscionable.

PALAST:
State wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection so long as America was safe. In recent years, CIA operatives had other reasons for not exposing Saudi-backed suspects.

TRENTO:
If you recruited somebody who is a member of a terrorist organisation, who happens to make his way here to the US, and even though you're not in touch with that person anymore but you have used him in the past, it would be unseemly if he were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA. What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.

PALAST:
Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blow-back? The younger Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by Salem Bin Laden's chief US representative. Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has, in just a few years of its founding, become one of Americas biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid advisor. And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the Bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.

ELSNER:
You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former President of the US who happens to be the father of the current President of the US. And you have all sorts of questions about where does policy begin and where does good business and good profits for the company, Carlyle, end?

PALAST:
I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed. FBI headquarters told us they could not comment on our findings. A spokesman said: "There are lots of things that only the intelligence community knows and that no-one else ought to know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

JAY: Graham has himself thought they should have been released. Why were they not?


SUMMERS: The initial version was that they had been redacted--suppressed, in short--at the insistence of the CIA, which indeed was the agency that processed the report for publication, as is reasonable. But Senator Graham made personal enquiries to find out why that particular 27 pages had been redacted. It was important. It was the end of their report, the conclusion, effectively their findings at the end of their investigation. And he said the report came back from the CIA that the 27 pages had been redacted at the insistence of President Bush himself.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7307


WHO APPROVED THESE FLIGHTS AND WHY

We really do not know why it was so necessary for the White House to allow the quick exodus of these Saudi and bin Ladens out of the country, and "the White House still refuses to document fully how the flights were arranged," according to a June 20, 2004, article by Phil Shenon in the New York Times .

We do know who asked for help in getting Saudis out of the country - the Saudi government. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12 The film also includes a television interview with Saudi Prince Bandar, confirming this as well.

Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has testified that he approved these flights, stating that "it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." Testimony of Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, National Security Council, before The Senate Judiciary Committee, September 3, 2003.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/fahrenheit-911-facts/what-fahrenheit-911-says-about-the-saudi-flights-out-of-the-country-after-september-11

Althouth Clarke said he approved the flights (which leads one to wonder who was in charge), it appears it was the Sauds who wanted the investigations supressed. Bush was merely doing the bidding of the Saudi Royal Family...

[surfdog]

11. Another nice copy and paste job

I still don't see where it says Bush approved the flights you have a link for that ?

You have posted about 10,000 words so far in your copy and paste posts do you have any links with words saying Bush authorized the flights ? my original question

[KansDem]

12. Try this...

Background
Writing on September 5, 2003, for The Hindu, Sridhar Krishnaswami said that the White House had approved the evacuation of the Saudi nationals. [6]

"In an admission that has raise [sic] eyebrows on Capitol Hill, officials at the White House are said to have approved a plan to evacuate scores of prominent Saudi Arabian nationals in this country, including members of the Osama bin Laden family in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Former White House advisor Richard Clarke was quoted in the September 4, 2003, The New York Times "as saying that he agreed with the plan because the Federal Bureau of Investigation had informed him that the Saudi nationals departing were not linked to terrorism; and the White House feared retribution for the terrorist hijackings if they stayed back in the U.S." [7]

"Many prominent Saudi nationals left this country soon after 9/11, with the knowledge of the FBI. But it is the first time that information is coming that the White House and senior administration officials had approved the plan.

Clarke spoke "of the involvement of the White House in the departure of prominent Saudi nationals, including relatives of Osama, ... several weeks after a Congressional Inquiry Report on 9/11 that ... raised a political storm. Some 28 pages of the report remain classified and much of the material is said to be about the involvement of foreign governments -- mainly Saudi Arabia -- in the events of 9/11.

See Congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.

"The Saudi Government has denied any role in the 9/11 events and has publicly called on the Bush administration to de-classify this section of the Congressional report, a request that has been quickly rejected by the U.S. President, George W. Bush.

Clarke's "admission of the role by the White House in the departure of some 140 Saudi nationals" led to the call from Senator Schumer "for an internal investigation by the White House on the matter," as Schumer suspected that "some of those who left hurriedly, including two relatives of Osama, may have had links to terror outfits and, therefore, could have shed light on terror attacks."

Schumer said: "This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get. It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed." A spokesman for the FBI "insisted that there was nothing to indicate that the people who left could have been of further assistance and that no 'additional courtesies' were extended to this group that would not have been available to others."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=September_11,_2001:_Evacuation_of_Saudi_Nationals

"White House" = George W. Bush
"Bush Administration" = George W. Bush

Are you saying that George W. Bush was not in charge during this time? Who gave the order? Because whomever did is getting their ass covered big time by George W. Bush.

[JDPriestly]

6. They were questioned, and I doubt that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

Embassies and their personnel do enjoy diplomatic immunity. It isn't always respected, but generally it is.

[KansDem]

8. "They were questioned"

Please see no. 7